simplerich

I’ve heard ads for SleepPhones on various podcasts out there and honestly… if I could remember which one I found them on first I’d have used their affiliate link or code or whatever so they got the credit for it. Because I really DID discover them through a podcast and I’m sorry I can’t give them the credit they deserve. I put off buying them for months. I just couldn’t convince myself they weren’t a gimmick. Really? A sweatband with earbuds sewn into them and I’m supposed to pay $40 bucks for that?

Yes and No. Yes. You should, and no, they’re NOT just a sweatband with earbuds sewn in. The speakers in these are wafer thin and flexible. They’re barely noticeable. When I put them on I can find the speaker best by turning the headband thing until I can hear in both ears. It’s well nigh undetectable through the material. I’ve fallen asleep with earbuds in and the discomfort has woken (waked, waken, awakened) made me wake up in short order. I sleep on my side, and the hard plastic nodule constantly mashing into my ear with a standard earbud was awful. That is NOT an issue with the SleepPhones. They don’t go in your ear. They are seriously, MAYBE the thickness of a silver dollar and are soft and pliable and are outside the ear, nestled in some sort of magic microfiber softness.

The material is as unlike sweatband material as the speakers are unlike earbuds. Where sweatbands are rough absorbent terry material the SleepPhones are soft, super baby-blanket microfiber soft and they just feel good. I can imagine wearing them even if I’m not listening to anything. They’re comfortable and comforting. I had no idea I’d like how good they fit. I got the medium because while I have a giant ego I efficiently pack it into a medium-sized noggin… unfortunately all my brains take up a bit more space than I thought. I seem to be just a little too big for a medium as the seam in the back stretches a bit… but it’s in the back so I can’t see it. I suspect a large would fall around my neck like a muffler/scarf so I have the right one. I just need a less magnificent brain so it’ll fit better.

My biggest worry when I got it was that I wouldn’t hear my alarm clock or phone. Fortunately for me, my assistant manager drunk dialed me at three in the morning and I woke up just fine to take the call. Unfortunately for him the next morning… I woke up just fine to take the call lol. Later that same morning when my alarm went off at six am I heard it as well and woke up. I’ve worn the SleepPhones three nights now and all three nights it has stayed in place, neither falling off my head nor turning so one speaker is on my forehead and the other on my neck.

My second biggest worry was that the cord was too short. I listen to my laptop and I don’t really want to roll over and jerk my macbook onto the floor since the laptop sits on my nightstand. Luckily that hasn’t been a problem for me, but only just barely. If I had a queen sized bed or was a big mover in bed it might be an issue. I don’t move much when I sleep. I’ll switch from side to side a couple of times but that’s about it… and evidently I wind and unwind an equal number of times since I haven’t yet awakened to find the cord wrapped around my throat. That is good. Remember my gigantic brain? It evidently keeps track of which way to roll when I move in my sleep for me. Very nice of it. Self-preservation, thy name is well… it’s self-preservation actually. Stupid giant brain wrote me into a corner and then snuck off to have coffee and I couldn’t write my way out! Honestly though, if you’ve got a giant bed and the music source is going to be a distance away you might consider an extension for the cord.  They’re available everywhere, SleepPhones has them on their site, Wal-Mart has them. If you think it’ll be an issue get one. They’re not that expensive and the SleepPhones are worth it. If you’re using an iPod or music player this won’t be an issue.

After the first night with the SleepPhones I knew I wanted to wear them while running but didn’t want to wear the same ones… I don’t want to wear a sweaty headband thing to bed. I love ‘em, but not enough to wear ‘em wet. Bleargh! So, I toddled on over to their website sleepphones.com and looked and what do I see? They make them for running! SQUEEEEEEE! I won’t put off getting my runphones at all! I’m ordering a pair very very soon. I can’t wait.

It’s possible you’ve never considered listening to something while you sleep but I do. I listen to audiobooks (just one so I sort of equate it with sleep time. I don’t listen to that book while driving lol) I also sometimes listen to some classical music or ambient stuff. I do it mainly to not hear any other TVs in the house or if it’s a UFC Fight Night and I go to bed I don’t hear the party in the other room. If you sleep with a snorer, if you’re in an apartment and you don’t want to hear the neighbors, if you live near a street and don’t want to hear traffic SleepPhones are perfect. I’m not getting paid for this, and odds are really good the ppl over there don’t know I exist but you should know their product exists, and if you’re in any of those categories I heartily recommend you give a set a try. They’re way better than I thought they would be. They’re NOT just earbuds stitched into a sweatband.

(Full Disclosure: If you buy from one of my links that goes to amazon I’ll get pennies on the purchase… but SleepPhones didn’t pay me a cent for this and if I remembered which podcast had introduced them to me I’d give them the credit anyway so the folks at SleepPhones would know their ad campaign worked.)

I’ve set a goal to read 40 books this year and this is one of them. Now, it’s not a management book at all. It’s fiction so if you’re expecting something along the lines of “Who Tipped My Purple Cheese At A Higher Level Like The Navy Seals” you’re barking up the wrong tree here. This book was too fun, too page-turningly-exciting to not suggest though. I gave it 5 out of 5 stars on goodreads.com and here’s my review.

I’ve never read any of the Dexter books. I’ve seen the show a couple times. There are tons of comparisons between the two, Dan Wells’ books and the Dexter books. I can watch Dexter or not. It doesn’t bug me. Never read one of the books. I Am Not A Serial Killer was a book I couldn’t put down. I wanted to call in sick to work to read it. It grabbed me and held me, tight, by the throat and I loved every minute of it!

There’s a bit towards the end where I found myself holding my breath, literally, not figuratively, holding my breath while I turned the pages as fast as my eyes could cram the words into my head.

It’s the story of a 15 year old sociopath who has no empathy. He doesn’t connect with people at all and he feels like an island, an observer of those around him. That in itself is something I think people can empathize with… everybody feels disconnected at times, like they’re watching life go on around them and they just aren’t “clicking” with what’s going on around them. Most of us haven’t taken animals apart to see what makes them tick though. As creepy as it sounds to read it… the protagonist, and the book is written from the point of view of the sociopath so you spend the whole book in his head, is likable. I didn’t want anything bad to happen to him. I want him to be OK.

A lof of times I find myself saying “He’s a good kid but…” about someone who maybe got in trouble with the law or with their parents. That’s hard to say here. He’s not kind of a troubled kid at all. He’s not troubled at all, and that’s the trouble. He referred to a person he got along with as “it” once and it shocked him. Not because they should have been a “she” or “he” (I’m trying to avoid spoilers here) but because he has studied serial killers and knows they refer to people as “it” to make the things they do to them easier. It’s easier to eviscerate an “it” than a “him” or a “her.” He’s not appalled by what he said so much as by what it means.

Really good book. Really disturbing. I can’t wait to read the next one.

I loved Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother. I recommend it to everybody who will listen. So, when I saw For the Win was out at a Borders near where I live I snatched it up in hardcover to donate to a library and I downloaded a copy for myself to read. Cory believes that he can give his stuff away and still make money. He believes the biggest danger to a writer isn’t someone stealing his work and reading it… that it’s nobody reading him at all. So, he gives his stuff away as well as selling it.

Anyway. I donated the book without reading it. I’m glad I didn’t put my name on it. There. I said it.

Here’s the thing. With Little Brother I knew what the problem was. I knew there had to be some resolution. I had some characters I cared about to focus on and I knew the desired outcome and what I didn’t want to happen to them. I was engaged in them and in their story. In For the Win there are a lot of characters. I haven’t really cared about them much at all. I can’t remember the name of the one I cared most about so that’s no good. And the problem? The problem is life isn’t fair. That’s the problem in the story as I saw it. How is that going to be fixed? It’s not. Life ISN’T fair. I’m three-quarters of the way through the book and I shouldn’t do the review until I finish the book. It’s unfair of me to review it before I’m done with it. The thing is. I’m done with it.

I can close the book right now without knowing what happens to any of the characters in the story and I won’t wonder about it later. The book is about the economies in online games. I LOVE online games. I won’t lie. I even bought gold once in Everquest (EQ). I played Everquest 1 & 2, World of Warcraft, Asheron’s Call, Star Wars Galaxies, and another one… I can’t remember the name. I didn’t play long. I played a lot of them. EQ for years! I was guild leader of a decent guild that’s still around I believe, years and years later. I invested five years in that game. Loved it. I got the economy. I understand it and how it worked. Cory didn’t want to step on any IP toes (Intellectual Properties) when he was writing the book so the games are weirdly named, Mushroom Kingdoms and things like that… that’s fine… I get it. Don’t want to incriminate an existing game and get them breathing down your neck.

Except he put them as products made by Coca Cola. Really? You dodge one bullet by making up weird game names, but then you invoke one of the most iconic names in the world as the parent company? It made the made up game names more distracting. Had he simply named them Megacorp it would have been less distracting to me. It really jerked me out of the book, the made up names interlaced with real parent company names served as a distraction, a focal point that shattered my immersion into the book-reality.

Last thing, and this is something I wouldn’t notice in a hard cover book. Cory did this in Little Brother and I read it in dead tree format and listened to it in Audiobook and I didn’t notice it. Each chapter starts with a dedication to a book store. That’s cool. In a novel I can skip that part. In the digital version, reading it on the kindle it was harder to skip, scanning was an issue so I wound up reading more of it than I wanted to. That’s a limitation of the kindle more than of the book. Here’s the thing though. I don’t care. I know that makes me a jerk, but reading about why a particular book store is special to someone is like listening to a guy on the bus explain to you why Freebird is the ultimate in anthems and it really means a lot to him “because of the really wicked shit I was going through when I heard that song for the first time you know what I mean man?” I do know what you mean man… and I still don’t like Freebird! My favorite southern rock song is The Three Great Alabama Icons by Drive By Truckers. (I grew up from ’68-’81 in Southern Alabama around the time the writer’s of this song were in Northern Alabama.)

I love book stores. There’s an excellent used book store in Southaven, Mississippi that I miss deeply, but unless you’re IN Southaven you don’t care about it is my guess. And if you are, and you’re a reader… you probably already know about it. They did a pretty brisk business.

Would I recommend this book? No. I wouldn’t, and I’m sorry about that too. I love Cory Doctorow’s blog and many of his other books. Seriously, Little Brother is in my top 5 and that’s saying something! But this one… it just missed on too many things. I didn’t care about the characters, the gaming part didn’t ring true, 3/4 of the way through I didn’t know what I was supposed to be reading/caring about. I didn’t know where he was going. I didn’t know where the characters were going, and I just didn’t care. And on a stylistic note… what the hell was with the chin waggling? Dear Lord!?!? Everybody was waggling their chin all the time. It was so distracting every time it would happen I’d look up and look around. I’ve STILL not seen anybody waggle their chin except for one guy, in India I think while watching Eat, Pray, Love. I’m not sure he didn’t have something in his teeth.

If you read the book and finish it and the ending of the book is worth it… can you shoot me an e-mail? I’ll finish it and edit this to reflect my mistake in stopping too soon as well as issue an apology for reviewing a book I didn’t finish.

I’m going to assume you’ve seen the cartoon. There are four seasons of the cartoon on Nickelodeon: Water, Earth, Air, and Fire. The movie started with a text crawl very much like Star Wars. Then there was a the normal introduction where the silhouettes of people did the karate, tai-chi, kung-fu or whatever moves as the names of the element were spoken aloud. Just like the cartoons that happened. It really settled me in as a fan of the cartoon. It set the tone… it made me think, “Ah yes… it will be loyal to the cartoon!”

The movie wasn’t all four seasons of the cartoon from Nickelodeon. It was just the first season and it was about an hour and a half long. So obviously some story lines were cut out and some side stories were cut. The actors looked like themselves so that was good. The scar on Zuko, the Fire prince’s, face was barely noticeable. That’s the only quibble I could find in the actors. Their acting was… good enough. Aang had a pouty lip. I guess there were two things and they were physical attributes. Seriously, his lip was always pouty looking. He looked like he’d been punched in the bottom of the mouth or maybe stung by bees or something. OK, crap. There were three things. Uncle was skinny and serious and didn’t seem as funny as wise, funny uncle had in the cartoon. That brings me to my biggest difference in the movie vs. the cartoon.

You know how Aang is 12 and an airbender? You know how airbenders are supposed to be pranksters? Fun-loving people who appear to not take things terribly seriously? They’re fun, funny. Couple that with Aang being 12 years old and you have a recipe for funny cartoons. Hiding behind ppl as they look for you, playing jokes on people, hide & seek, that sort of thing. A big part of my enjoying the cartoon was enjoying the youthful enthusiasm of the airbender. There was a lot of laughter and joy. The joy of life and living. That made it fun to watch. It made the character likeable and someone you wanted to see turn out OK. Not just physically, but mentally. You don’t want to see his joy of life hurt. In the movie though. M. Night Shazamalamadan decided one of the things he needed to cut was all the funny, fun, jokes, or joy. There were exactly two scenes that MIGHT have been reminiscent of the sort of fun-loving antics of cartoon Aang that made the show fun to watch.

You know how Katara’s brother, Sokka, and how he’s there primarily for comic relief? Always hungry, tries to eat the Appa The Flying Bison and Momo, the bat-lemur. Falls a lot? Twice he did something funny, and both times it was to fall victim to Katara’s bad water bending. She got him wet once and froze him into a block of ice once. Also, Uncle was never funny. Never did any funny stories or witty things that had a point. Just sort of a physically fit, taller, very thin Yoda. All serious trainer uncle, no funny uncle that liked to drink tea.

The bending effects were only meh. They did LOTS of the movements and motions and then something would happen really quickly and be over with. The effects were cool but too short. They could have been longer, not necessarily more spectacular. The end fight where Aang finally did his thing using the ocean to fight of the entire fire nation army by himself. That was cool. It was also done in the avatar state, also cool, and with a minimum of jumping around and arm waving… which is as it should be. For him to knock back two guys he did like 15 seconds of tai-chi, maybe tai-kwon-do… I think water was Tai-chi… movements, swung his arms around, and did a no-hands somersault just as an example. Lots of build-up, for not enough pay off. If it’d taken that long to bend the elements they should have had their butts handed to them by any relatively quick fighter. They’d be knocked out before they bent anything. (Don’t get me started on how all the earth benders ever did was pull rocks out of the ground.)

I’d give it 7.5 out of 10 stars. I enjoyed it. I liked the actors. I liked the story. I wish it hadn’t been as dry. I wish it’d been funnier. At least some funny. He was tortured. He was sad. He was grief-ridden… he wouldn’t have been any fun to be around. I hope they make more. I hope Aang (whose name isn’t pronounced the same in the movie as in the cartoons for some reason) has lip reduction surgery. Maybe they could put some of his lip fat into Uncle so he’d be fatter. A skinny Uncle was distracting.

Starship: Mutiny and Starship: Pirate by Mike Resnick were books one and two in a series. I’m a big fan of space opera. I thoroughly enjoyed Dune, and include it in my list of books I would take to a deserted island. E. E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensmen series was hugely influential. The Honor Harrington Series by David Weber is also one of my favorite series ever. I like strong characters and bigger than life conflict. I’m a sucker for lantern jawed heroes who are almost super-human in their abilities.

Starship: Mutiny introduced us to a military man who was too smart for his own good… too smart for the military. He kept getting in trouble and demoted twice for doing great heroic things that showed off his genius while rubbing his chain of command in how much smarter he was than them. I could totally identify with that. After all, I’m a genius right? Just ask me. I’ll tell you. And, as in the book… I will go on to explain over and over again why my reasoning is right, why my compatriots should trust me, why everybody else is stupid, and why, in painstaking detail both before, during, and after, my plan will succeed. Wait. No, that’s not me. That’s the protagonist of Starship: Mutiny, Wilson Cole. By the end of the first book I was really tired of hearing him explain himself over and over again. I get it… you’re smarter than everybody else. So was Lazarus Long and everybody on the Gay Deceiver (Deety, Zebediah, Jacob & Hilda) but Heinlein didn’t constantly beat me up with it. He let them ACT intelligently without constantly blowing their own horn.

Wilson Cole came across not intelligent and witty and urbane. He came across over-bearing and arrogant. That was the first book, which I mostly enjoyed. I don’t mind arrogant that much if there are other redeeming qualities. By the time I got to the second book, Starship: Pirate I was tired of the arrogance and tired of how Resnick used the supporting characters as foils for Wilson Cole. I felt like he, Resnick, could have allowed the other characters to have a brain too. Every time a decision had to be made in book two there was an argument where the supporting characters fought with Wilson Cole only to have him bulldoze them into accepting his way of doing it and in every case he was right. Seriously… if they’re that stupid why would he be friends with them?

The head of security, Sharon Blacksmith, isn’t just a strong woman who is head of a hugely strong security department and who is incredibly competent at her job and amazingly smart at her job is, for some reason whenever she gets around Wilson Cole, a giddy slut who can only talk about the previous night’s sex and their future sex that they may or may not have depending on if they’re getting along at the moment. She does this all the time, in person, by hologram, in front of other members of the crew, just whenever Resnick needs to try and break tension. Instead of coming across flirty or flirtatious it comes across trashy and wrecks her character for me.

By the end of the second book in the series (Starship: Pirate) I was done with Wilson Cole and his supporting crew. I liked the story and really wish I didn’t hate the characters so much. I won’t read books 3, 4, or 5. This is saying a lot since I already bought book 3 on audible.com. I’d rather listen to nothing than subject myself to more of Wilson Cole bullying his “friends” and telling us how smart he is and how blind and unobservant his crew is.